Posted in: Movies, TV | Tagged: Cornell Cottonmouth Stokes, entertainment, luke cage, marvel, Mike Colter, Misty Knight, netflix, television

Moment Of Truth – The First Episode Of Marvel's Luke Cage

After a year of waiting since his debut in Marvel's Jessica Jones, midnight hit on the West Coast and Cheo Hodari Coker's take on Marvel's Luke Cage went live on Netflix. I stayed up, ready to go as the September 30th began.

Now, I'm just going to talk about the first episode here because that's all I've had time to watch. My internet went out about 10 minutes into episode two and didn't come back until this morning when it was time to work.

And I'm going to do this as best I can without spoilers. But that might be hard to do completely, so keep that in mind while reading and if you want to know nothing about the series… stop reading.

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Let's start off with the opening credits. It's a love letter to Harlem, NY and since Harlem is almost another character, I think that is very appropriate. It also has it's own color, yellow. Where I had a problem was the musical choice. There is no intensity to the song. The theme for Marvel's Jessica Jones has this awesome build up. This one just falls flat to me and I found myself wondering if that was a xylophone being used. The last thing you want in a song is to make the listener wonder what the hell is making that noise.

Moving past that, I think the show overall is filled with a lot of good and a little bad. I'm going to mention the bad now so I can move on to the good. Because Cage is already established in the universe, it felt like the the rest of his world was a bit cliche or stereotypical just to get past the setup and onto the story. I'm sure this is something that will quickly fall away as more episodes are watched. But having just watched the first the impression is still there.

Now, that aside, the strength of this episode and I'm guess will be of the series are the tone and characters. Starting off with Luke Cage (Mike Colter). He was mysterious when we first met him but we got almost no backstory other than about the woman he loved who died. Likely that was done so all the rest could be explored here in his own series, and that starts happening quickly. They quickly establish the characters fugitive status, his time in prison and that he really doesn't want to go back.

Moving to Simone Missick as Misty Knight. The character never resonated with me in the comics. But the times I saw her, she was just a supporting character. But in this episode Missick steals every scene she's in. Whether it's flirting with Cage at a club or at a crime scene, Knight is a great addition to the MCU.

Now, with three seasons so far between the two Marvel's Dardevil and one Marvel's Jessica Jones, the thing that the Netflix series does better than the films is create compelling villains. It's no different with Mahershala Ali playing Cornell 'Cottonmouth' Stokes. There is a cool, controlled vibe that comes off of him, like "he's got this"… but when that changes, it turns into something very lethal. I think folks will be talking about Cottonmouth on the same level as Vincent D'Onofrio's turn as Wilson Fisk and David Tennant's time as Kilgrave.

The rest of the characters don't get much room to breathe yet, leaving them a bit two-dimensional for now. But I expect we'll see a lot more growth from Alfre Woodard's Mariah Dillard, Frank Whaley's Rafael Scarfe, Frankie Faison's Henry 'Pop' Hunter and Theo Rossi's Shades Alvarez.

As for the feel of the series. Showrunner Coker's created a believable Harlem that accepts Cage as one of it's own. But Cage hasn't accepted Harlem. He's not settled yet, but we get closer to it as the episode goes along. Paul McGuigan, who is probably best known for directing four episodes of Sherlock and the pilot for Designated Survivor, shows us a tight-knit community that looks out for itself and is ready to turn dangerous at the drop of a hat. It's a corner of the Marvel Universe that we've never seen before, yet you can see how it exists within the whole.

Bottom line, the pilot episode of Marvel's Luke Cage is not without it's flaws, but they're flaws that most pilots have and I have faith that they will fall away quickly as I watch more episodes. Which I will start doing after I post this story.

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